Vox Day and Me, Part 1 – The Elementary Years

Disclaimer 1: For those of you with no interest in Vox – please feel free to skip. But you might find it interesting – from the angle of hearing a little of what it was like for me to grow up Baptist.

Disclaimer 2: I have found that my memories of the distant past are often lacking in their accuracy.

Disclaimer 3: Unlike other people’s “Vox Day and Me” sets – I’ll actually be talking about Vox Day before the fifth or sixth entry.

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Growing up, my church was Calvary Baptist. Do you want to know where it is? Get Vox’s PDF of World In Shadow and search for ‘Lollapalooza’.

I attended Calvary from day one. My mom has pictures of me as a one year old with two other Calvary babies who were born a couple days before and after me. Seventeen years later I graduated with these two.

Calvary was a good church. I credit the good memories of my growing years at Calvary as one of the reasons I held onto my faith when it wavered in my later high school years. As I have mentioned, Calvary greatly aided my family in sickness and in death and health and remarriage. I thank God for Calvary.

I don’t have a memory of when Vox’s family first arrived at Calvary. I just have a vague sense that he wasn’t there in my early Sunday school classes, and then at some point, around third or fourth grade he was.

I do have a first memory of Vox*, though.

My Mom was often a kid’s choir director, and Christmas is often an important time for the Kids Choir Directors. I recall one Christmas we had a large tree on the platform which was adorned with symbolic ornaments. Several of us kids were asked to recite a little memorized passage about one of the ornaments in a Sunday Morning service.

I was asked to speak to the symbolism behind the Butterfly. (You know: metamorphosis – new creation – our family had watched black swallowtails come out of their cocoon earlier that year – which is why I think I was chosen for this one – never mind the fact that my Mom was a director.)

The morning of the presentation, one of the children who had been given an ornament passage to recite was unable to be there. This put the leaders in a tough spot, but Vox (we were perhaps in the fourth grade) offered to take up the task. So they gave him the card (one minute before we were to go up) and said he could just read it when it was his turn.

I recall my Mom’s happy expressions of amazement after the service when she marveled at the fact that Vox had memorized the card as we walked up to the platform and recited it from memory.

Okay, so he’s pretty smart, I thought. I was correct.

Two more elementary stories – circa 6th grade:

1. Our Sunday school teacher, Mr. W, was a respectable gentleman who was of the sort that was against many aspects of our social culture (i.e. television and rock & roll). We spent weeks of very interesting Sunday mornings looking at this man’s slides of rock album covers and listening to his explanations of why each of them were sources of evil – right down to the Beach Boys Pet Sounds album. Vox’s first album, if memory serves, was AC/DC (or was it Black Sabbath? – I always get those mixed up). So yes, there was some friction.

Another Sunday morning, Mr. W suggested that our class all agree to watch the same television show and take notes on its morality. As I recall, as we were trying to decide which program to watch, Vox had some suggestions that didn’t really please Mr. W. He was thinking ‘Love Boat’, while Vox’s choices were more . . . esoteric in nature.

2. Vox and I were baptized on Easter Sunday evening along with several other kids – perhaps during our sixth grade year. It was a celebratory service, it was God-glorifying, and I have good memories of it.

A few weeks before the service, I was in the room as Vox gave his testimony to the elders. I would like to tell you what he said, but I won’t for three reasons:

As I say, my memory is quite inaccurate about these things, and this in particular I wouldn’t want to get wrong.

Apparently, what I heard is extremely out of date, and (most importantly)

Vox has been reticent to share his testimony. I won’t be going against that.

Vox is correct in his public statement that the Bible doesn’t command us to share our testimony. But there are good biblical examples of people doing this, so I would encourage Vox to one day speak these good words. I think it would tend to increase the Kingdom, and that’s a good thing, isn’t it?

But, who knows? He probably has his reasons.

Next up: Vox Day and Me – Part 2 – The Teen Years – where you’ll hear (among other stories) about the time when Vox was more chicken than Jamsco. It happened!

22 comments

I’m sitting here attempting to picture how a 6th grader’s testimony could be considered “out of date.”

I’m simultaneously picturing Vox basing much of his testimony on the 1979 NFL rules book, preliminary findings on the Shroud of Turin, or John Keynes’ private diary entries on the occult. Couldn’t the testimony just be updated with new stats? (I’m kidding.)

In all fairness, I wouldn’t want my 6th Grade testimony (if I were to have one, which I don’t) brought up: but that’s because I don’t enjoy recalling the dissonance of youth and confusion. It is enough to know I was a youth and confused, and I lose the point in seeing more than that.

Some children have strong testimonies that are God-honoring, edifying to the Body and easy to share. I know of a few. I also know of far more that are not all three, and I very much doubt those kids will want those testimonies to be significant messages ten, twenty or thirty years hence.

I’m really glad you are taking the time to do this, even if the testimony remains in the lock box. It is good for strong characters to have intimate biographers, even if the subject resists, at times, such scrutiny.

Oh. See, my favorite books of all time are didactic, boring, and poorly written. In fact, the minute they stop boring me, I set them down.

After all, for what other possible reason on earth would I bother actively seeking out blogs upon which to post my opinion of another book that was so unmemorable that I just had to remind everyone about it?

863 words to tell us nothing more than – you knew Vox as a child, one day he memorized some things in church, and that you witnessed his testimony but do not wish to reveal it.
It has been almost two months now…is there more?

I’d like to know when that was, given I lived in Jacksonville for 41 of my 46 years. I’ve known several Beales’s, and I want to say he and I met a time or two – nothing major, just knew a few of the same people and met in passing.